Hard to believe that 12 weeks have gone by! I started this challenge on July 13th — crazy, isn’t it, starting a weight loss challenge in the middle of summer.

So, first things first: I didn’t quite make my body fat percentage goal. My goal was 18.27% and I ended up at 18.80%. I’m off by half a percent… but I’ll take it! Ha!

I didn’t re-read my original goals daily, which I know would have helped even more. Amazingly enough, the daily soy does seem to have helped my hot flashes; I am drinking more water. But I haven’t been taking my omega-3 pills — although I do eat salmon once or twice a week, so that’s good.

What I’m most happy about is regaining the strength I lost when I broke my wrist back in December. I’ve been weight training 3 times a week (the majority of time) and doing my Cardio Coach twice a week. That has paid off in spades! My body is so much stronger than it was 12 weeks ago! Quite the difference!

Here are the final stats for these past two weeks (including pics):

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Things are still going pretty well. I’m down to the home stretch with just one week left before final measurements!

Here are my stats for the end of Week 11 (beginning with my starting measurements):

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Wow! I still have 2 weeks to go and I’m almost at my fat loss goal! During Week 8 and Week 9 of my challenge, I gained a bit of fat (had a sore lower back, so I didn’t exercise Week 8. And a pasta-filled weekend didn’t help me at the end of Week 9).

I was pretty sure that my carb-overload weekend threw off my Week 9 weigh-in and measurements last Monday — and I was right. I weighed myself and took some measurements mid-week, on Thursday, and couldn’t believe the results. It’s as if my body had shifted gears! I went from 139.6lbs (63.3kg) on the Monday down to 137.4lbs (62.3kg) on Thursday. Body fat % went from 20.8% to 19.30%!

This week’s measurements saw even more of a drop. The interesting thing is that my tape measurements aren’t moving too much. I’m hoping this is due to some muscle gain — I’m definitely much stronger than when I started this challenge back in July!

Here are my stats for the end of Week 10 (beginning with my starting measurements):

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Oof! I did well in Week 9, exercise- and calorie-wise, keeping my calories to around 1700 a day — except for the weekend! It was one of the last nice days of summer and we headed out to an outdoor terrace for supper on Saturday. (Wine and Chicken Pad Thai.) And then Sunday was a pasta supper — need I say more?

I had weighed myself for fun during the week and know I was doing well. My weekend bad habits (temporarily) ruined that! It’s not that I ate a ton of pasta and gained tons of fat, but some overeating — especially when it comes to pasta — just causes me to gain weight that usually goes away after a couple of days, as long as I get back to my good eating habits!

(Just a quick aside: has anybody tried Miracle Noodles? I became an affiliate and just ordered the angel hair noodles. It’s a zero-calorie substitute for pasta (pure fiber). I’ll let you know how it tastes!)

I knew my Monday weigh-in wouldn’t be great… and I was right!

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Because of my sore lower back (oh, and did I mention my plantar fasciitis acting up at the end of the week??), I did not get a lot of exercise this past week. And, boy, does it show in this week’s weigh-in and measurements!

Putting aside the fat gain/lean body mass loss, I’m feeling pretty good! My injuries/soreness are getting better and this morning I started Stage 2 of New Rules of Lifting. It was great to start some new exercises — and a lot of them are more difficult variations of the ones I’ve been doing. If you’ve been using the same workout routines for awhile, you need to SHAKE THINGS UP! Not just because of exercise boredom, but also because your body adapts to what you’ve been doing.

One example of change: I was doing regular squats, but now I’m doing front squats. Love em! Another examples is instead of regular lunges, I’m doing a lunge with my rear foot slightly elevated. You wouldn’t think it would make much of a difference… but it does!

Here’s my end of Week 8 measurements:

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It seems I’m lapsing back into some bad blogging habits! I only logged 2 days of food for Week 8. Now, I’m pretty sure I did okay food-wise — but the thing is, I know myself: it’s so easy to stop logging but then old habits might creep back. I find I do so much better when I log the majority of time. One week might not make a big difference, but I know, for myself, if I were to go several weeks without logging in my fitness tracker, I’ll most likely start underestimating how much food I’m eating.

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I messed up with the Accu-Measure! I was counting one tick mark as 1mm, when it’s actually 2mm. I was thinking I could just recalculate all the past weeks, but most weeks I would take three readings and average them out if they were different. I think it’ll just get confusing if I start try to figure everythign out, because I only wrote down the average.

But what this means is: I’m actually doing better than I thought!

The starting measurement of 10mm (22.30%) is valid, because the tick marks are all on even numbers. In fact, all multiples of 10 are clearly marked on the caliper.

After the lousy week-end, with much overeating, I was expecting some really bad numbers come Monday morning!

I’m only showing my starting and current stats since the ones in between are messed up now. (But if you want to see them, click here.) I wrote down the difference in parentheses.

Drum roll, please….

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This one’s going to be short and sweet! I did very well on Friday during the day — and then had two bowls of pasta, plus some wine on Friday night. I didn’t even bother to log it! Ha! Saturday was a catered supper (fancy food!), so there was no way I was going to pooh-pooh any of the courses. But what I did was go for a 1 hour bike ride Saturday morning and I made sure I ate healthy, small meals more frequently during the day so that I wouldn’t be ravenous by suppertime. Luckily, the portions were small for supper, but the dessert did me in!

Sunday was a recovery day after the night before, but we did go to my in-laws who ordered pizza — and bought a rhubarb/strawberry pie. They insisted we take it home, but I’m glad to say I haven’t touched it.

Just a quick aside: if you have problems with week-end weight gain, read this – Weekend Weight Gain: How to Avoid It.

After this week-end, I almost moved my Monday weigh-in to Tuesday. But I’m glad I didn’t. You can see why here: End of Week 7 – Weigh-in & Measurements.

In so many ways, it’s been a really good week. But I’m not eating 100% clean and I seem to have forgotten that there are such things as vegetables! And I seem to be paying for it, unfortunately…

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If you haven’t read my Week 6 summary, you can read it here.

I had a so-so week when it came to food and exercise. Luckily enough, I pretty much stayed the same — which is good, all things considered. But the whole point of a weight loss/fat loss challenge is to LOSE, not MAINTAIN! Seems I keep forgetting that part! Ha!

If anything, I hope this blog shows you that a) everybody has problems/challenges when it comes to weight loss and b) you just have to keep going and don’t give up. Review and refocus each week.

Here are my stats:

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